The elderly portion of the population grows quickly in industrialised countries. An elderly person often lives in a place, where relatives or friends do not have time to visit sufficiently often in order to evaluate the health and functional ability of the person. In such a case the worry of the relatives and friends for how the person they are close to manages in their daily routines can be great.
In order to eliminate such a situation, various computerised solutions have been developed, by using which the daily activities of a person or several persons can be monitored on a rough level. The apartment, which a person uses, can for example be equipped with various door or room sensors, which indicate the use of the door or the movement of the person inside the room. Thus the person's movement can be discovered over a certain time period. If no signals regarding the person's movement are received from the sensors either at a certain time or at certain time intervals, the arrangement provides an alarm, which is relayed through a data network. Examples of such monitoring systems are shown in the patents JP 2007299121 and CN 101324662.
Solutions are also known, wherein the person has a device for example on his or her wrist, which device monitors vital functions or which can be used to send an alarm to an external person in situations, where the person feels that his or her ability has weakened. The alarm can be sent for example via radio, telephone or the internet.
Owning and caring for pets also continuously becomes more common. Caring for pets is an element, which counterbalances the daily hustle for a busy human. The presence of a pet has also been shown to be beneficial for a human's mental welfare and even to lower the blood pressure. Doing things with a pet maintains both the physical and mental fitness of a person.
Various pet monitoring and controlling means functioning via data networks are known. Especially the emergence and development of the internet as a central communication channel has made the development of various pet monitoring and controlling systems easier. With such monitoring and controlling means the behaviour of a pet can be monitored in real-time either via video image or an audio dispatch also when outside the home. From the video images and/or the sounds of the pet one can deduce in what kind of activity state the pet is at that exact moment.
The movement and recreation of the pet can also be monitored in real-time via a data network. The locationing of the pet in the home can be implemented for example with video surveillance, RFID identifier readers, GPS, infrared sensors, acoustic locationing methods, ultrasound locationing, radio locationing or calculation of the location based on acceleration measurement.
At least part of the monitoring of the daily activities of the pet can be given over to a suitably programmed home computer. In such a system a computer in the home simulates the owner during at least a part of the day. One such arrangement is depicted in application publication US 2006/0011144. The depicted arrangement comprises real-time positioning of a pet (dog) with various methods, control of the food and drink dispensers, monitoring of the activity state of the dog with an acceleration sensor (in its place or moving), monitoring of the body temperature of the dog, monitoring of the barking of the dog, creating various scent, sound and picture animations depicting the owner and showing them to the dog. If an activity model, which differs from the normal, can be observed in the activity of the dog at a certain time, the computer sends an alarm regarding the matter to the dog owner. The solution shown in the reference publication can thus give an alarm, if the activity of the dog momentarily differs sufficiently from activity models stored in the memory of the computer.
The arrangement shown in reference publication US 2006/0011144 cannot make conclusions in situations, where the activity of a dog surprisingly changes, even if the activity stays within normal limits, but the movement of the dog still changes either temporarily or little by little to differ completely from the normal movement. For example the dog moves as much as before, but the movement area has changed from the usual. One possibility of the movement of the pet changing in the described manner is a sudden change in the functional ability of a person in the apartment, such as for example a sudden illness.